Freedom of religion, the Prime Minister said, “is an essential part of multiculturalism, in the same way no Australian should be discriminated against for their ethnicity or sexuality. Protecting freedom of belief is central to the liberty of each and every Australian.”

But race, age, disability, ethnicity, and generally speaking, sex and sexuality, have one feature in common: rigidity. We cannot change our age, our race and so on. Basic morality suggests we should not suffer discrimination for simply being who we are.

Religious belief, on the other hand, is a choice. Not an imprint in our DNA or a quirk in the human condition. Faith is an intellectual and spiritual destination people arrive at, stay at, circle around, visit from time to time or leave altogether. Children raised in devout families often start questioning religious teachings when they hit adolescence - around the same time they’ll detect cues about the kind of sexuality their faith communities sanctify, and the kind they denounce.

Gay students at religious schools can absorb the message they’re deviant and defective subtly, through unspoken assumptions about the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, or explicitly in doctrinal instruction or kindly homilies about all God’s children being equally worthy of love, as long as they don’t act on their love for the same sex.

So when Porter says the government will seek the Australian Law Reform Commission’s advice on how to balance the rights of non-discrimination of sexually diverse students and staff with religious schools’ right to “maintain conduct and teaching in accordance with their faith”, he’s talking about this right of schools to promote a world view that, at its most compassionate, encourages gay students to deny themselves the fulfilment heterosexuals take for granted.

The religious schools already have this right, to varying degrees, under state law, and in 2013 the Gillard government extended religious exemptions under federal anti-discrimination law. At present religious schools can lawfully fire and refuse to hire gay teachers, and possibly expel gay students.

But Australia has changed since 2013, and specifically since last November when a resounding majority of citizens backed same-sex marriage in the postal plebiscite.

Personally, I’m as queasy at weddings as I am in houses of worship when there’s active worshipping going on. Even so I prayed for a “yes” vote knowing it would provide same-sex attracted people a powerful affirmation of their inherent equality and dignity.

During the plebiscite debate “yes” advocates strategically argued that same-sex marriage poses no threat to religious freedom - that’s technically true, but not quite accurate in a spiritual sense.

In announcing his government’s plans to legislate against religious discrimination and appoint a religious freedom commissioner, Morrison said Australians of religious faith feel “the walls have been closing in on them for a while".

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Just because religious conservatives are paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get them. True, no one’s seriously demanding ministers of religion officiate rainbow weddings. But in 2018, laws allowing religious schools to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality, even if this takes the form of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay teachers, are starting to look anachronistic. (Most religious conservatives agree that expelling gay students is wrong.)

When last month 34 church schools signed a letter supporting the preservation of laws giving them the power to discriminate against gay students and teachers, the backlash from former students and the public was so fierce that the Anglican Archbishops of Sydney and Melbourne called on the government to recast religious freedom as a “positive” right rather than a free pass from anti-discrimination regimes.

Last week we heard the faith “positive” narrative from Morrison, Porter, Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie et al, as they framed religious freedom as an “essential part of multiculturalism”, as if these latest proposals are really about protecting Islam from militant secularists.

As a secularist, I seethe at the assertion of moral equivalence between religious schools’ right to promote their doctrinal ethos and gay students’ right to mental health. As a pluralist, I’m instinctively nervous about anything that smells like totalitarianism, and I can see the argument that curtailing religious schools’ freedom to ensure their staff at the very least refrain from undermining religious norms might take on this odour.

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I can see the argument, but I’m not convinced by it. The religious freedom “debate” is really an instance of the bully, accustomed historically to throwing their weight around, trying to play the victim. The bully here being religious institutions: enabled by their cheer squad in Parliament and the media, these institutions continue to enjoy privileged status under our tax system while simultaneously demanding taxpayer-funded handouts for their schools and insisting on exemptions from secular anti-discrimination laws.

For all the fuss about marriage, the moral imperative should be divorce: if the church won’t bow to the state then it’s high time the state cut the church loose.